Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations how do you sample bottom waters?

PaPond - As a chemist, you probably know when you are sampling for DO you do not want to "bubble" water into a sampling jar/bottle. The sampling jar that "Wood" referenced seems like a pretty good device for collecting water without bubbling at discrete depths and with minimal exposure to air considering it is homemade. FPLover's sampler is also a good idea for capturing water without bubbling/air exosure. But I'm not sure how you fill a test bottle with his sampler without pouring/splashing. Could add a hose to one of the ball valves.

For all non-oxygen sampling I use a modified old large glass acid bottle with a finger handle. I made a base weight the diameter of the acid bottle base out of lead (you could use cement). I then duct taped it to the bottom of the bottle. Wrapped tape across the lead bottom and up each side of bottle. Then wrap tape around the perimeter of the bottle to keep the side tapes from coming off. I tie a rope to the finger hole. I use a one hole rubber stopper with an eye screw in the hole. Tie a string to the eye screw. Lower the stoppered bottle to desired depth and pull string/cork to fill bottle with water. This works fine for all tests except DO.

I have another home-made smaller sample bottle which would be better for sampling thru ice because you would not need as large of ice hole to drop bottle thru. I took a 16 oz glass pop bottle and duck taped a very large U bolt to it so the bottle was between the U bolt. U bolt was heavy enough to sink the bottle. I wraped copper wire around the bottle neck and made a loop to attach a narrow rope. My small sample bottle is not corked, but it could be, just like the larger sampler above. I spent the "big dollars" for a DO YSI probe. I have seen used YSI DO meters reasonably priced on ebay.

I would not spend the time and money doing chlorophyll-a tests. Not sure you would get enough information from them to warrant the time money and effort. A secchi disk (purchased or homemade) would be cheaper, quicker, and simpler. Secchi disk will give you a relatively good idea of planktonic algae. If your pond does not contain lots of suspended detritus most of the time all of the variance in secchi readings will be mostly due to planktonic algae. But if you really like monkeying with chemistry then do the chlorophyll a's.

If you do not plan on fertilizing, I would do a few ramdom alkalinity tests at work before you retire. You will find that after the first year or so the total hardness and alkalinity will not change much esp if your pond is in buffered soils. The pH will fluxuate a fair amount when algae blooms are occurring esp in softer waters. I don't get very concerned about pH because fish can tolerate quite a wide range of pH that occurs in most all ponds without having problems. The pH in the anoxic layer will always be lower than in the warm surface layer and pH will continue to decrease in anoxic layer as summer progresses. Fish won't be there so I again don't get too worried about pH in the hypolimnion.

As I said earlier if you don't fertilize the only two perameters I get serious about are DO and temp.

Ortho-phosphate (soluable reactive phosphorus) is a fairly simple test & would maybe interesting for you to test and correlate with secchi disk and chlorophyll-a readings. Again I would not do it unless you enjoy chemical tests or are fertilizing the pond.

Total phosphate is a more difficult test. You have to digest all organics and bind all phosphate before mesuring T.phosphate. Difficult & time consuming test and not really very impt for a small fish pond situation. I would not test ammonia, nitrite or nitrate unless you are fertilizing. Run N03 test monthly at work for the first year and it will not vary a whole lot from that baseline after your first year. Any Questions?